Opposition Whip (suddenly springing up from behind a limber à la HAWKSHAW the Detective). It is not too late! Return with me to Westminster forthwith. The Third Reading is down for to-night! With a special train we shall be in time! You can yet record your vote!
Col. X. (suddenly reviving). Say you so? Then I will recover! I will do my duty!
[Exit, to vote against his Party, and to be put permanently on the shelf, from a military point of view!
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
SIR EDWIN ARNOLD's paper on Japan, in Scribner, for March, is interesting and also amusing. The Japanese seemed to be a charming people; and the Japanese women delightful as wives; but then they can be divorced for being talkative.
A propos of Japan, to judge from one of our LIKA JOKO's capital illustrations of Hospital Nursing in The English Illustrated Magazine, the Matron's room must be "an illigant place, intoirely"; while as for amusement, if the picture of a nurse giving a patient a cup of ink by mistake for liquorice-water isn't a real good practical side-splitter, the Baron would like to be informed what is? Then we come upon a delightful little picture of "The Pet of the Hospital"; and so she ought to be, for a prettier pet than this nursing Sister it would be difficult to find. What becomes of her? Does she marry a "Sawbones," or run off with a patient? Anyhow, she must be a "great attraction," and if anything were to happen to the Baron, and he couldn't be removed to his own palatial residence, he would say, "Put me in a cab, drive me to the Furniss Hospital, and let me be in Pretty Pet's Ward."
The Baron has just been dipping into Mr. JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY's "Pages on Plays" in The Gentleman's Magazine. JUSTIN HUNTLY expresses his opinion that "The Dancing Girl will almost certainly be the play of the season; it will probably be the principal play of the year." "Almost certainly" and "probably" save the situation. The Baron backs The Idler against The Dancing Girl for a run. In the same Magazine Mr. ALBERT FLEMING has condensed into a short story, called Sally, material that would have served some authors for a three-volume novel.
It is a pleasure for the Baron to be in perfect accord on any one point with the Author of Essays in Little, and in proportion to the number of the points so is the Baron's pleasure intensified. Most intending readers of these Essays, on taking up the book, would be less curious to ascertain what ANDREW LANG has to say about HOMER and the study of Greek, about THÉODORE BE BANVILLE, THOMAS HAYNES BAYLEY, the Sagas, and even about KINGSLEY, than to read his opinions on DICKENS and THACKERAY, placing DICKENS first as being the more popular. The Baron recommends his friends, then, to read these Essays of ANDREW's, beginning with THACKERAY, then DICKENS; do not, on any account, omit the delightfully written and truly appreciative article on CHARLES LEVER; after which, go as you please, but finish with "the last fashionable novel," wherein our M.A., in his Merriest-Andrewest mood, treats us to an excellent parody.
The Baron has appointed an extra Reader, and this Extra-Ordinary Reader to the Baron has just entered upon the discharge of his duties by reading Monte Carlo, and How to Do It, by W.F. GOLDBERG, and G. CHAPLIN PIESSE (J.W. ARROWSMITH). He reports in the following terms to his loved Chief:—This book achieves the task of combining extraordinary vulgarity with the flattest and most insipid dulness—not a common dulness, but a dulness redolent of low slang and dirty tap-rooms. The authors seem to plume themselves on their marvellous success in reaching Monte Carlo, which, with their usual sprightly facetiousness, they call "Charley's Mount." They are good enough to tell such of the travelling public as may want to get there, that the train leaving Victoria at 8.40 A.M. reaches Dover at 10.35. Stupendous! These two greenhorns took their snack on board the steamer (Ugh!), instead of waiting until they reached Calais, where there is the best restaurant on any known line. Instead of going by the Ceinture, they drove across Paris. The greenhorns arrive at Monte Carlo, and then settle on their quarters. Anyone but an idiot would have settled all this, and much more, beforehand. One gentlemanly greenhorn, who wishes us to think that "il connait son Paris," talks of "suppers of Bignon's" (which must be some entirely new dish), and informs us that, "at the Hôtel de l'Athenée, the staff esteem it rather a privilege, and a mark of their skill in language, to grin and snigger when sworn at in English." Oh, sweet and swearing British greenhorn! now I know why the French so greatly love our countrymen. But why, oh why do you imagine that you have discovered Monte Carlo? For the details of the journey, and the instructions to future explorers, are set out with a painful minuteness which not even STANLEY could rival. As for Monaco, dear, restful, old-fashioned, picturesque Monaco, whither the visitor climbs to escape from the glare and noise of Monte Carlo, the greenhorn dismisses it scornfully, as having "no interest." How much does this ten-per-center want? He "waggles along the Condamine;" he mixes with many who are "pebble-beached;" he speaks of his intimates as "Pa," "The Coal-Shunter," "Ballyhooly," &c., and declares of the French soldier that "the short service forty-eight-day men don't have a very unkyperdoodlum time of it." There's wit for you, there's elegance! Then he becomes Jeromeky-jeromistically eloquent on the subject of fleas, throws in such lucid expressions as "chin music," "gives him biff," "his craft is thusly," and, altogether, proves himself and his fellow-explorer to be a couple of the slangiest and most foolish greenhorns who ever put pen to any sort of paper. I can imagine the readers who enjoy their stuff. Dull, swaggering, blatant, gin-absorbing, red-faced Cockneys, who masquerade as sportsmen, and chatter oaths all day. "Ditto to you," says the Baron to his Extra-Ordinary Reader, and backs his opinion with his signature,